A government report from the European country acknowledges that the processes were plagued with irregularities, from the theft of babies to documents with false information.When he was eight years old, Markus Lidman realized he was different from the other children in Pitea, a town in northern Sweden. They had all inherited the same pale skin tone as their parents. He, on the other hand, was dark-skinned. “I decided to ask them if they were really my parents, and they told me they had adopted me in Colombia in 1982. They sat with me and showed me a video of the orphanage,” he recalls. He had been born Luis Alberto Sánchez in Cali, a hot city 7,000 mile away. Like 4,500 other Swedes born between 1970 and 2000, his Colombian parents had abandoned him. Or at least that’s what the adoption papers said, without providing any details.

From that moment on, Markus began to feel a void that he still feels at age 43. “Questions started popping up for my biological mother: ‘Why did you abandon me? Wasn’t I lovable enough? Did you have a drug addiction and couldn’t take care of me?’” he says via video call after finishing his shift as a waiter at a pub. He believes the lack of answers has affected him at different times. “I panicked about women leaving me. I did everything to avoid it. And when my girlfriends dumped me, I attempted suicide,” he says before saying that he now is married and has a daughter. “Years later, I did drugs and stupid things. When you have a hole, you fill it with shit.”

Markus Lidman.CORTESÍA

Markus decided to look for his mother. The problem was that he only had the scant information from his documents. “All they say is her name, and I think it’s made up. When I Google it, all that comes up is an inventor from the 1900s with a mustache,” he explains. He asked for help in Facebook groups and that’s where, a year and a half ago, he met Mikael Kjelleros. He’s something of a celebrity among Swedish adoptees: he found his Colombian mother in 2024 and now helps others. He recommended that Markus take a DNA test on MyHeritage, a platform that has genetic data on some 10 million people worldwide. That didn’t work either.

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has directed the state government to submit a report on the welfare of a minor child who was taken into custody after allegedly being adopted through a child trafficking network. he child, adopted in 2023, was later seized by the police and handed over to the Women and Child Welfare Department. Challenging this action, a couple from Suraram mandal in Nalgonda district, M Venkanna and his wife, approached the High Court. They contested the decision to remove the child from their custody.

Single judge dismisses petition

A single judge had earlier dismissed their petition, observing that an adoption carried out in violation of legal procedures could not be permitted. The couple subsequently filed an appeal. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice GM Mohiuddin heard the matter on Friday. Counsel for the appellants argued that although statutory procedures may not have been strictly followed, the child had been raised with care and affection, and sought directions to restore custody.

Govt counsel opposes plea

Opposing the plea, government counsel Kommineni Mani Deepika submitted that the child had been adopted from Nakka Yadagiri, who is allegedly part of a child trafficking racket, and urged the court to dismiss the appeal.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate.

In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives.

Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued.

The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.Three justices issued a scathing dissent, calling what happened in this court “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation.”

An attorney for the Masts declined to comment, citing an order from the circuit court not to discuss the details of the case publicly. Lawyers representing the Afghan family said they were not yet prepared to comment.The child was injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in September 2019 when U.S. soldiers raided a rural compound. The child’s parents and siblings were killed. Soldiers brought her to a hospital at an American military base.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate.

In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives.

Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued.

The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud. Three justices issued a scathing dissent, calling what happened in this court “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation.”

An attorney for the Masts declined to comment, citing an order from the circuit court not to discuss the details of the case publicly. Lawyers representing the Afghan family said they were not yet prepared to comment.

Aymeric and Naiah Monello-Fuentes contracted with Miracle Surrogacy only to discover the baby they're raising isn't who they expected.

A Las Vegas couple's dream of being parents becomes a nightmare when DNA tests reveal a surrogacy shock, sparking a legal battle.

When Eva Brookes was browsing job adverts last year, she saw one ad looking for the next generation of podcast producers and audio creatives. She knew straight away what she'd pitch to get the role, having been born in China in 2000 but raised by a white British family in Essex. Now, her podcast for BBC Sounds asks how her life and understanding of herself was shaped by transracial adoption.

Eva Brookes' relationship with her racial identity wasn't something she thought about until she started primary school.

Born in China during the period of the country's one-child policy, when baby girls were often abandoned, Eva was found at a roadside as a newborn and taken to an orphanage.

At the age of 13 months, she was adopted by Moira and Chris Brookes, a couple from Billericay, who had adopted another little girl from China three years earlier.The idea to look to China had come to Moira when she'd seen a newspaper article "that China was opening up their adoption to older ages", Eva said. The couple had looked into adopting in the UK, but it wasn't straightforward because they were in their 40s.

"They knew a social worker who told them about a family who adopted from China and went to monthly meetings. Mum and dad went to them and saw these people that were already doing it and so it gave them that hope that people have returned with babies so maybe they could."

Dear friends,

I have been working to write a complete history of the International Mission of Hope (IMH). It would be an immeasurable gift to our community if you could help review this timeline I’ve put together and add anything you may recall.

In order to do this effectively and efficiently, I’ve listed a few initial questions below. Could you please respond via email to these specific bullet points? If you don’t have information on a particular point, please simply write “no information.”

Initial Questions for Review

Leadership: Aside from Cherie Clark and Sunil Prakash, who else was involved in "running" IMH?

by Sofia Nordgren, born in Bangladesh and adopted to Sweden

My name is Sofia Nordgren. According to my adoption documents, I was born in Bangladesh in 1973, although my exact date of birth has never been verified. I was adopted to Sweden in April 1976 and grew up in a small rural village in Dalarna, far from the capital, Stockholm.

I was adopted into a family that already had a biological daughter who was three years older, according to the information I was given. I grew up in a highly homogeneous environment where there were no other people of colour, immigrants, or adoptees. As a child, I experienced racism and bullying at school, which deeply shaped my sense of identity and belonging.

In 1995, I took a decisive step and moved to Stockholm, where I have lived ever since. The city offered greater access to diversity, adoptee communities, and opportunities for work and connection.

I made my first return journey to Bangladesh in 1999, travelling alone as a young woman, without language skills or local contacts. In 2025, I returned twice more, once in April and again later in the year, as part of my ongoing search for truth, origins, and connection.

Thousands of pages of once-secret court documents show how federal officials and a Virginia court helped an American Marine adopt an Afghan war orphan, in defiance of the U.S. government’s official policy to unite the child with her family.

The Associated Press fought for three years for access to the documents, which reveal how the country’s fractured bureaucracy enabled Marine Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, to adopt the child who was halfway around the globe, being raised by a couple the Afghan government decided were her family.

The records reveal that the federal government and the court have blamed each other for what has become an international incident, which the government says threatens America’s standing in the world and appears as an endorsement of child trafficking.

The baby was orphaned on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2019. U.S. soldiers pulled her from the rubble and took her to the hospital at an American military base. The U.S. State Department, under President Donald Trump’s first administration, worked with the Afghan government to locate her family.

THE SPECIAL ADVOCATE for survivors of institutional abuse has said the Mother and Baby Institutions redress scheme is “exclusionary, poorly advertised, and re-traumatising for many applicants”.

In May 2024, Patricia Carey was appointed as the Special Advocate for Survivors and in this independent role, she engages with survivors and ensures their views are represented to the Government.

The Mother and Baby Institution Redress Scheme was launched in March 2024 and provides financial payments and health supports to eligible people who spent time in Mother and Baby or County Home Institutions.

But since the redress scheme opened, less than 10% of its budget has been spent and Carey said there is an “urgent need for the Government to make every possible effort to ensure that no Survivor misses out on their redress”.

Carey added that the first annual report of the scheme highlighted a “poor uptake”.